Author Archives: david manners

Semefab sees improving margins

Semefab Glenrothes

Semefab Glenrothes

Semefab, the Glenrothes CMOS sensor specialist, has said it expects margins to recover this year after making a loss of £582,930 in 2014 on sales that increased 15% to £9.06 million. In 2013 it made a profit of £127,065.

Semefab attributed the losses to circumstances outside its control:

  • Extra staff taken on to cope with a rise in orders were not fully productive.
  • There were unexpected rises in costs particularly energy cost.
  • Investment in work in progress did not convert to revenue due to unforeseen events.
  • The plant was shut down for two weeks to comply with a three yearly mandatory Fixed Wiring and Electrical Inspection.

Semefab is working with Swansea University and a commercial partner to develop a generic platform point-of-care diagnostic sensor.

The company had net current assets and shareholders’ funds of £1,189,619 and £4,051,401 respectively at the end of 2014.

david manners

Inphi delivering 40/50/100/400G PAM4 interconnect ICs

Siddarth Sheth - Vice President, Networking Interconnect

Siddarth Sheth – Vice President, Networking Interconnect

High speed analogue semiconductor company Inphi will have general availability in Q4 of four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) chipset solutions for 40G, 50G, 100G, 400G and a companion linear TIA for multi-rate PAM4 interconnects, it says.

The foundation of the PAM4 PHY IC solutions is InphiNity Core DSP Engine and a media agnostic dual mode OmniConnecttransmitter architecture that can be targeted to multiple performance oriented applications for optical and copper based interconnects, while keeping a low power profile.

There is a clear need to increase the speed of interconnect pipes while maintaining cloud economics and lowering carbon footprints, says Inphi. PAM4 modulation will take the industry over the next wave of Ethernet deployments for optical and copper interconnects by doubling the bits-per-symbol at the same baud rate, it says.

By integrating multiple channels along with transmit and receive PAM4 and FEC functions on a single IC, Inphi claims it can double the levels of integration available from existing PAM4 IC offerings and scale the solution across multiple rates.

“With multiple contributions on PAM4 technology in the IEEE and other industry MSAs and with the IEEE 400Gbps taskforce agreeing to use PAM4 for next- generation electrical and optical interfaces, Inphi has now proven that not only does the technology work, but can be productized and is indeed the right way forward to 40G, 50G, 100G, 400G and beyond,” says Inphi’s Siddarth Sheth.

david manners

Samsung pays up for stricken fab workers

After a decade of struggle, Samsung workers whose health has been affected by working in fabs are to be compensated.

Samsung has set up an $85.8 million fund for employees who contracted diseases while working at its semiconductor and display plants. The fund will also be available to the families of deceased workers.

The workers have been represented by an activist group called Sharps. According to Sharps, some 200 Samsung operatives have been taken ill, of whom 70 have died.

Diseases attributed to working conditions at the plant are the cancers lymphoma and leukaemia. Radiation and chemicals used at the fabs are blamed for causing the conditions.

A year ago Samsung apologised to sick workers and their families.

The fund will also be used to find ways to improve working conditions in the fabs to try and prevent the diseases.

david manners

Microsemi launches sensor interface ICs

Microsemi LX3301A

Microsemi LX3301A

Microsemi is launching the first device in a family of sensor interface ICs based upon inductive sensing technology.

The LX3301A, the first inductive sensor IC in the market using linear variable differential transformer (LVDT) architecture implementations on printed circuit boards (PCB), is designed for applications in the automotive and industrial markets.

The LVDT features diminish noise and interference and can also replace incumbent Hall-effect sensors which, being magnet-based, are susceptible to external magnetic fields and/or proximity to metal objects. Inductive technology eliminates the magnet, improving immunity to interference.

The device is suitable for control systems and industrial automation, specifically linear displacement measurement (fluid level sensing, gear position for transmission actuator position and brake lamp switch/proximity detection) and angular motion measurement (robotic arm position, rotating shaft position, pedal position and rotary controls).

It also meets AECQ100-certified grade 1, ISO26262 compliance and production part approval process (PPAP) documentation support.

david manners

Toshiba to sample 256Gbit V-NAND next month

26aug16ToshibaToshiba is to start sampling a 256GBit, 48-layer, triple-level cell V-NAND memory next month.

BiCS Flash, as Toshiba calls it, is based on a 48-layer stacking process that surpasses the capacity of mainstream two dimensional NAND flash memory, while enhancing write/erase reliability endurance and boosting write speeds.

The 256Gb device is suitable for consumer SSDs, smartphones, tablets, memory cards, and enterprise SSDs for data centres.

Since announcing the prototype BiCS Flash technology in June 2007, Toshiba has continued development towards optimisation for mass production. To meet further growth in the flash memory market in 2016 and beyond, Toshiba is proactively promoting migration to BiCS Flash by rolling out a product portfolio that emphasizes large capacity applications, such as SSDs.

Toshiba is currently readying for mass production of BiCS Flash in the new Fab2 at Yokkaichi Operations, its production site for NAND flash memories. Fab2 will be completed in the first half of 2016.

david manners

Altera and ZMDI add digital power management to FPGA

Altera Enpirion

Altera Enpirion

Altera is to integrate the digital power management technology developed by ZMDI (Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden) into its Enpirion PowerSoC devices.

Altera says that adding ZMDI’s technology to the SoCs “will provide greater control performance between Altera’s FPGAs and its power management ICs”, enabling Enpirion devices to support new power modes, delivering up to a 30% reduction in FPGA power consumption (static and dynamic).

ZMDI’s digital power technology allows the implementation of multi-objective, heterogeneous control modes while delivering best-in-class transient response in a programmable digital domain, it says.

Anthony Kelly, formerly ZMDI’s chief system architect, will join Altera and lead the digital power design team.

“The addition of digital control into our highly integrated power ICs will allow us to better address the power supply demands of high-end FPGAs while delivering increased system-level power savings,” says Altera’s Mark Davidson.

david manners

Crystek low phase noise VCXO

Crystek CVHD-952Crystek has launched an Ultra-Low Phase Noise HCMOS Voltage-Controlled Crystal Oscillator (VCXO) providing a -150 dBc/Hz noise floor.

This overall ultra-low phase noise translates to a typical phase jitter of 0.5 psec (12 kHz to 80 MHz).

Packaged in a 9×14 mm SMD package, the CVHD-952 is available from 131 MHz to 200 MHz. Input supply voltage of 3.3 Vdc consuming 25 mA of current is required. Extended temperature operating range of -40°C to +85°C is also available.

The Crystek CVHD-952 HCMOS VCXO, with low phase noise performance, is suitable for applications such as HD Video Broadcast equipment.

david manners

IDT launches digital re-distortion demodulator

IDT F1358 block diagramIDT is selling a digital pre-distortion (DPD) demodulator operating from 3200MHz to 4000MHz which enhances the performance of the digital pre-distortion transmitter linearisation path of cellular base stations.

With its integrated digital step attenuator (DSA) and single-pole-double-throw switch (SP2T), the F1358 DPD joins two other demodulators—the F1320, operating at 400 MHz to 1200 MHz, and the F1370, operating at 1300 MHz to 2900 MHz.

All of the DPD demodulators feature IDT’s patented Zero-Distortion and Glitch-Free technologies and are footprint compatible.

The F1358 demodulator improves transmitter adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) performance while reducing costs by eliminating the need for external IF amplifiers, baluns, switches and DSAs.

It reduces power consumption by over 1 Watt compared to conventional solutions, and delivers high reliability with an intercept point of 42 dBm up to 105 degrees operating temperature.

The Device comes in a 6 x 6 mm 36-VFQFPN package.

david manners

ARM buys Sansa hardware-based security technology

Car-hacking demonstrations have recently shown the vulnerability of mobile connections to hackers

Car-hacking demonstrations have recently shown the vulnerability of mobile connections to hackers

ARM has bought the five year-old Israeli security firm Sansa which has a hardware solution for mobile connectivity.

The price is thought to be somewhere around $90 million.

Sansa, which was called Discretix until last October, has had $37 million of venture capital money and is backed by both Sequoia and Accel, among others.

Car-hacking demonstrations have recently shown the vulnerability of mobile connections to hackers. Software solutions are widely seen as only temporary because hackers find their way round them. Sansa’s approach is via hardware which physically isolates sensitive operations from the apps processor.

“Any connected device could be a target for a malicious attack so we must embed security at every potential attack point,” says ARM’s CTO Mike Muller. “Protection against hackers works best when it is multi-layered, so we are extending our security technology capability into hardware subsystems and trusted software. This means our partners will be able to license a comprehensive security suite from a single source.”

“Sansa has a hardware subsystem that adds additional isolation of security operations from the main application processor,” says ARM. “this is complemented by software components operating on top of trusted execution environments to perform security-sensitive operations.”

Sansa says its technology is in devices sold in quantities on 150 million units a year.

According to ARM, the deal complements the ARM security portfolio, including ARM TrustZone technology and SecurCore processor IP.

See also: What is… a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)

 

david manners

Mouser ships Intel Compute Stick

Intel Compute Stick

Intel Compute Stick

Mouser is shipping the Intel Compute Stick with Ubuntu Linux which enables any screen with an HDMI interface to become a fully functional personal computer.

The stick has pre-installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS OS.

It has a 64-bit 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3735F Quad-Core processor with 2 MB cache, integrated Intel HD graphics, and multi-channel digital audio.

It plugs into any display that has an HDMI 1.4a interface. Networking is achieved with onboard IEEE 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, and peripheral connectivity is available through the Bluetooth 4.0 and USB 2.0 interfaces.

Once plugged into a display’s HDMI port, the user powers the Compute Stick with a wall adapter. A status LED indicates the device is powered while both graphics and audio is provided through the HDMI port. The device can be controlled through a wireless keyboard and mouse.

The stick has 8GBytes of eMMC Flash for user file storage and 1GByte of RAM. An Intel Compute Stick running Microsoft Windows 8.1 is also available from Mouser Electronics. Flash user storage is expandable for both versions through a microSDXC slot on the side of the device.

david manners